The cherry blossoms bloom earlier each year As if the efflorescence bright as the wind Were not a fixéd point in history But brief, new burgeoned summer That burnt our shadows into the bitumen Mistaking prayer for a boxer’s curled up fists The bell ringing out The hollowed temple of the skull Marble blacked and cavern eyed Emptied of all but desperate, whorling signs In concrete, a mocking, splayed-tooth smile Still, we only require paper walls The ink so thin as to be, almost invisible Except in the slaloming golden light Of a lantern’s flinting shadow Gaining purchase In the intaglio The way that desperate fingernails Hold, and hold and hold and slip We only need through morning’s paper walls A slower, gentling sun To read this warning over and over
